March 11/00 5:21 am - Tour de Snowy Stage 8 & 9 reports

National Coach Jacques sends in his report on the final day of racing in the Tour de Snowy.

Stage 8 - Thursday March 9th Thredbo to Cooma 97kms

The morning stage to Cooma started in the damp and relatively cold ski station. For the Canadians, the game plan was fairly simple. At the 18km mark Geneviève was to try and secure the QOM competition and then just continue to cover Tracey (Gaudry) if she was to attack. After easily winning the QOM, the pack came back together in Jindabyne at km 35 and it was the up to Erin (Carter), Anne (Samplonius) and Sandy (Espeseth) to cover potential moves and attacks. Fortunately, no one had attacking intentions.

10 km out of Jindabyne, it was time to do the last QOM of the tour. At the foot of the hill Geneviève moved to the front and put in a hard pace. With a km to go, the pack had once again broken up and the Timex team was trying to help out Tracey. The sprint was launched at 300 metres to go, an all out drag race that was won by Geneviève.

In the descent to Berridale the whole pack got back together once again and the Canadians were prompted to watch for attacks by the Dutch and Timex. As anticipated, team were trying to launch attacks but the moves were always covered by the Canadians.

With 20 to go, a group of 7 went up the road with Erin Carter making the split and just sitting on for the ride. In that group was Mari Holden from Timex, which meant that Saturn was threatened to lose Anna Wilson's 3rd place overall. The chase was on.

In one of the last small rises before the finish 3 riders got shot off the break but Erin was still there. In the end, the stage win went to Sarah Carrigan of AIS. A win that denied Mari Holden some valuable bonus seconds to get closer to Anna's third place.

The pack rolled in 39 seconds behind with no real incident.

Stage 9 - Cooma criterium 27kms

For Geneviève and the Canadians, this stage was just a formality. A break went up the road after 5 laps with 2 Dutch riders, Odessa Gunn and Alison Wright.

Though the break was not gaining more than 20 seconds the pack was not in a big hurry to bring things back. With 5 to go, the pack started to react and would come within metres of the break on the finish line.

In the final sprint, an incident occurred between Wright and Van Melis (Holland). In an all out drag race, Van Melis started to drift onto Wright squeezing her into the barricades causing Wright to crash with 10 metres to go. The ruling would disqualify Van Melis and give the win the Wright who was just shaken from the crash.

So that's it, Geneviève takes the overall and Queen of the Mountain wins in front of Tracey Gaudry. As far as the team goes, all women rode a very good race and the chemistry was super. Geneviève proved here that despite her young age she was able to keep cool and focused and put some faith into her teamates. It all paid off.